You’ve got to be kidding me! 6 Surprises I’ve Seen in Real Estate
Being in real estate for all these years, I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. I find it so interesting the different ways that people live. I’m not saying it’s good or bad or indifferent, I just want to share the things I have seen along the way. I find some of them to be very interesting. Those of you that know us personally, you know we are very transparent, so please know I’m not judging; I am simply telling it like it is 😚.
- Excuse me, Sir, what are you rolling? Yep, you heard me right! I have been in a house where an individual had a green leaf plant substance and put it into a little white rectangle paper and rolled the said paper into a stick. The best part is the person was completely unphased by my being there. There’s a time and a place people!
- Leave it out to dry! We all know we have that piece of clothing or undergarments that have sensitive material and you can’t dry them. My best advice to you is maybe hide such clothing until your house is not being looked at by a real estate professional. So picture this: the owner is showing me the master bedroom closet. Usually I don’t pick up on clothing items that are sitting around, but this time something caught my eye in the corner. It wasn’t pants. It wasn’t a shirt. It wasn’t socks. Instead, it was a very skimpy piece of lingerie that the lady had sitting out to dry. You learn quickly a lot about a person when you see their lingerie. 👏Just keep that in mind before you allow someone into your home.
- Do you believe that seeing is believing? Well, here is one for the book! You would see all that God gave you in this bathroom. Imaging you had a bathtub that is at least 4 feet tall from the floor. Nothing too crazy…right? But what about this – the tub is on a 3-sided wall, and all 3 sides have 3-4 foot mirrors that start at the brim of the tub. There are also ZERO steps to get into this tub. So as you might have predicted, you have to hike your leg(s) up to get into the tub. Now, unless you are fit and fabulous with no imperfections, this is a visual I wouldn’t want to see. Now for advertising purposes, the mirror part wasn’t shown 😏but I can promise you’ll I never had that in my bathroom!
- Just put that anywhere! This story definitely makes it in the top two grossest homes I’ve ever been in. Here we go. $120,000 two-story home in South Marion. I thought I would be walking into a pretty nice house for that price in this neighborhood. Boy, was I ever wrong! I walk into this house, through the front door, and instantly notice something on the floor. I originally didn’t think anything of it! Then I walk closer to said object, and I noticed it was brown and had a long round shape to it. Oh no. Could that be dog poop? As I come up to it, it is confirmed it was dog poop. We’re not talking dog poop that just happened. You could tell that the dog poop had been there for quite some time and it didn’t even have a smell. Trying to give the benefit of the doubt yet again, I think this was just something that was maybe overlooked. That absolutely was not the case at all. The more I walked through the house, every room had dog poop in it… Just when I think it couldn’t get any worse, I opened one of the bedroom doors, and that must have been the dog’s primary area to relieve itself. I’m still not sure what was more overwhelming – the stench or the amount of poop in the room. I told the homeowner that I would be unable to list their home unless these items were cleaned up. Long story short, the house never got listed.
- Would you like mushrooms with your meal? I’m not sure why Marion and Fairmount come up in the majority of my stories. Honestly, I’ve never even thought about it until I started this post, but here’s another one. A seller from California calls me, and they have an abandoned house in Fairmount that they thought they were going to do some rehab work on but never got around to being able to get it done. So they reached out to me to help them sell this property. First item on the list was to actually go look at the home. I have seen houses that have set vacant for a while, or had water leaks in them. But this one I had seen something I had never seen before. I walk in, go through the front door and then instantly stopped by the growth of mushroom-like fungi on the carpet. I took pictures and called a mold remediation company. Trying to figure out what on Earth I am looking at, come to find out there is a fungus called Poria fungus. It is very voracious. His response was, and I quote, “I would rather have termites for 2 years than an infestation of this fungus”. My takeaway from this encounter, is if you own vacant property, CHECK ON THEM REGULARLY. 🍄
- Please don’t disturb my towels! I was doing an appraisal for a local bank at a house in Marion. I thought to myself, “No big deal, I do this all the time.” I get my paperwork ready, I have my clipboard, and I am ready to go through and see what this house has to offer. Before I get into the story, I want to clarify that I am a judgment-free Zone 🤗. I am in no way, shape, or form the ultimate cleaner of my own personal home. There are things that are left out, there are dirty dishes, and there is some clutter. I am just like your everyday person, And I would say the majority of homes I go in are very well maintained, and people really do take pride in their home(s). I can say, hands down, this was one of the most bizarre encounters I have had in real estate. So I’m doing my thing, and I go up to the door to knock. Everything seems cool, the lady opens the door, and I am instantly hit with a smell that is not pleasing. I’m holding my breathe almost the entire time I’m touring the home. I get to the bathroom, and when I do appraisals, I have to look in your bathtub/shower. I noticed in the middle of the floor of this particular bathroom there is a heaping pile of towels. By heaping, I mean it probably came up to my thigh, and I’m about 5 foot 7. They weren’t just cleaned and folded, they were used towels piled on top of each other. The smell in this bathroom was stronger than any other room in the house. The homeowner looked at me and said, “Will you please not disturb my towels, my dog just died.” From what I gather from the rest of the conversation, the dog had not been buried yet and was underneath the heaping pile of towels. 😲🫣🤯I got out of there as fast as I could!
